No abstract

A nearly 900-ft-long (274.3 m-long) extension to Global Container Terminal's wharf along the 50-ft-draft (15.2-m-draft) Port Jersey Channel located in Bayonne, New Jersey, was designed to accommodate Suez Max Class vessels having a maximum draft of 47.5 ft (14.5 m). The major challenge of the project was spanning the wharf extension over an existing 15 ft (4.6 m) diameter sanitary sewer effluent outfall tunnel which runs at an acute angle to the alignment of the wharf extension. Piling or other foundation elements were prohibited from being installed within 15 ft (4.6 m) of the tunnel corridor. In order to accommodate this restriction, a 190-ft-long (58-m-long) by 30-ft-deep (9-m-long), 500-ton (454-tonne) steel truss was designed to span over the outfall tunnel and support the waterside rail of the ship-to-shore cranes. In addition, at locations inboard of the waterside crane rail, and in particular at the landside crane rail, steel box girders were designed to span over the outfall tunnel.The 100-year-old outfall tunnel was built around 1913, and its structural condition was unknown since the tunnel has remained in continuous service for the past 100 years. The governing utility authority specified that vibrations from pile installations adjacent to the tunnel corridor could not exceed 0.5 in./sec (1.3 cm/sec). As a result, the design-build team developed and carried out a vibration monitoring test program to identify minimum safe distances from the tunnel for pile driving impacts. Once these safe distances were determined, the design was developed to accommodate these restrictions, and vibrations were monitored during production pile installation to confirm compliance with these vibration limits.The caissons supporting the waterside crane beam truss consist of steel pipe piles with rock sockets, with the load transfer length limited to the portion of socket below the pipe invert elevation. The working load on these caissons is 1,700 tons (1,542 tonnes). All other piles are 24 in. 2 (154.8 cm 2 ) precast prestressed concrete piles, with and without steel stingers, and steel H piles. The superstructure consists 1009 Ports 2013 © ASCE 2013 Ports 2013 Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by New York University on 08/04/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.of precast concrete pile caps and a composite precast/cast-in-place concrete deck. The maximum working load on the foundation piles is 300 tons (272 tonnes).A stone revetment, designed to resist the propeller wash from container vessels was constructed beneath the wharf. Stone was deployed in carefully placed staged lifts in order to mitigate the potential for failure of the existing very soft clayey silt seabed slope.Background